Panel: Queer Ukraine

On the longest night of a Berlin winter two women sit side-by-side. Both fled the Soviet Union as children, one from Ukraine, and her girlfriend from Russia. Set against a backdrop of war between those nations, fact and fiction intermingle in Yelena Moskovich’s spellbinding new novel, Nadezhda in the Dark, exploring the radical sense of separation at the heart of both the migrant and the queer experience.

DViJKA Collective’s anthology of poetry, essays, memoir and fiction, written by queer Ukrainians – some living and writing in their war-torn homeland, some in exile – is a testament to their resilience, their courage, and their hope for a different future. Queer Ukraine is their love letter to Ukraine and a poignant weapon in their fight for liberation.

Join us for this rare opportunity to hear one of the most exciting queer writers of our time in conversation with Ukrainian writers and activists from the front line, telling their complex, compelling stories on their own terms. The panel will be led by Brighton’s own Maria Jastrzębska whose Polish homeland has its own complex relationship to both Ukraine and LGBTQ+ rights.

In solidarity with our queer brothers and sisters, a collection will be taken after this event on behalf of charities supporting LGBTQ+ people in Ukraine including Tu Platform Mariupol and Queers for Ukraine.

Yelena Moskovich has been variously described a true original, a literary titan, one of the greatest writers to ever dance on our scorched, collapsing plane of reality; her writing as genuinely subversive and innovative, cosmic and intimate, entirely alive – and we couldn’t agree more.

She is the author of four novels, Virtuoso, The Natashas, A Door Behind a Door (long-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize), and most recently Nadezhda in the Dark, published by Footnote Press.  She emigrated to the US with her family as Jewish refugees in 1991, then again on her own to Paris in 2007.

DViJKA Collective is a Kyiv-born, UK-based duo of artist-researchers working in the fields of performance, film, writing and archiving. Presently, their work revolves around spotlighting the experiences of LGBTQ+ Ukrainians and documenting the history of queerness on their land. In February of 2023, alongside Renard Press they published Queer Ukraine: An Anthology of LGBTQI+ Voices During Wartime, platforming urgent written work from the Ukrainian queer community. Their work re-written – a fictionalised correspondence via letters between two queer subjects during wartime, is currently exhibited as a part of Ania Nowak’s show Kissing Doesn’t Kill at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Tanya is an illustrator from Dnipro, Ukraine, currently based in London, where they draw comics and design clothes. They recently started writing out of a feeling of urgency during a war that is predominantly directed at erasing their culture and history; they felt it necessary to document their experiences, to name what is happening, to make sure a record is preserved. Tanya is grateful to their Armed Forces for fighting for their right to create unapologetically – a right that generations of Ukrainians have fiercely sought to defend throughout history.

Poet, editor and translator, Maria Jastrzębska was born in Poland and came to the UK as a child. She was the co-editor of Queer in Brighton (New Writing South 2014). Her most recent collections are Small Odysseys (Waterloo Press 2022) and The True Story of Cowboy Hat and Ingénue (Cinnamon Press/Liquorice Fish 2018). She was Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry Prize in 2019 and her work is widely anthologised including Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe 2015), Wretched Strangers (Boiler House Press 2018), Ukraine in the work of International Poets (Poezja Londyn 2022) and The Transformative Power of Tattoo (Guts Publishing 2023).

The Cedars of Walpole Park, her selected poems were translated and published in Poland (Stoważyszenie Żywych Poetów 2015). She was the writer for the ACE-awarded collaborative cross-arts project Snow Q and filmpoems of her work have been screened internationally. She translated the work of Polish writer Justyna Bargielska and co-translated Slovenian writer Iztok Osojnik. She has taught creative writing to community and women’s groups, refugees, LGBTQ+ projects, students and the Poetry School.

This event will be BSL interpreted.